Joe's Pub at the Public Theater

Founded in 2016, New York City's EPIC Players—the acronym stands for Empower, Perform, Include, Create—is a nonprofit theater company that provides opportunities and communities for neurodivergent and disabled performers. In a pair of cabaret shows at Joe's Pub on April 2, performers from the troupe sing numbers from the Broadway roles they'd most like to play. (EPIC will also be appearing at Lincoln Center on April 12 as part of this year's Big Umbrella Festival.)

Good grief! French hornist and performance artist Kyra Sims and writer-performer Mara Wilson—yes, the former child star of Matilda and Mrs. Doubtfire—host a multifaceted variety show dedicated to creative works on the subject of sorrow. The mourning glories include comedic storytelling by Gastor Almonte, burlesque by Iris Explosion, live art by painter Katie Kuzin and cartoonist Alex Krokus, and music by Matt Ray, Darian Donovan Thomas, violinist Concetta Abbate and pianist Adam Tendler. 

Disco enthusiast Aviva Zafrin amassed more than 150k followers on TikTok with her high-spirited disco riffs, so she's taking the next logical step to fame for someone in her early 20s: cabaret! So far, it's going pretty well—this is her sixth solo show at Joe's Pub. 

What are the odds that New York City would simultaneously offer two shows about making a radical career change to work as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art? And yet: As Patrick Bringley performs a stage version of his memoir All the Beauty in the World at the DR2, the performance artist and proud weirdo Neal Medlyn takes the stage at Joe's Pub—mere blocks away!—to weave his own tale of gainful employment, joined by a live band and some of his colleagues from the Met. (Medlyn estimates that, among other differences, his show will have "approximately 150 times the amount of talking about penises" as Bringley's.) For an extremely New York double header, try catching both performances back to back on April 15. 

The standards of tomorrow, today! Old-school musical showman Julian Fleisher usually specializes in covers of classic American rock and pop tunes, but this time he returns to his well-stomped grounds at Joe's Pub with a new set, Global Hits, that comprises an eclectic group of songs he has written himself. A few special guests will likely pop by to lend a hand or a voice.